things that make Melissa sad

12/19/2009

Four series I love came to an end this year. Two I'm okay with; one I'm uncertain about, ONE I AM IN COMPLETE DENIAL ABOUT YES JESSICA DAY GEORGE I AM LOOKING AT YOU. Although I am very sad (and in denial, DON'T LOOK AWAY WHEN I AM TALKING TO YOU, JESSICA), fortunately for me (and the other lovers of these series), the closing books were uniformly fantastic. (But don't think that lets you off the hook, Ms. George.)

1. CITY OF GLASS by Cassandra Clare, which I reviewed here. You may remember that in that particular review, I ate some crow over having originally rolled my eyes at hearing that a fanfic writer got a book deal. After spending almost the whole year reading other books, I still think that Clare's Mortal Instruments trilogy has one of the best YA series endings I've ever read. I definitely wanted more Clary and Jace and Simon, but all of my major questions were answered and all the ends were tied up well enough. We consistently sell this series over and over again, and I'm always happy to put it in someone's hands.

2. THE LAST OLYMPIAN by Rick Riordan, which I never did get around to reviewing because it came out at a really busy time and I barely had time to read it, let alone write about it. There are probably one or two reviews of this tiny little series roaming around the internet. You may have heard of it - Percy Jackson and the Olympians? (About to be made into a movie that I am skeptical about because the actors are so much older than their kid characters?) Anyway. I knew going in that this was the last book, so I was prepared. I was prepared for it to end, and from reading the other four (and meeting Rick once), I felt that he would not let us down with the ending. I was right. I would like more of Percy's story, but I feel that Rick did him justice, and did the readers justice. That story is over, and I am satisfied. I also knew very, very early that there would only be five, so I had a long time to get used to that fact. Also Rick has a new book coming next year, and while I have no idea what it's about, who's writing it is really what matters in this case.

3. FRONT AND CENTER by Catherine Gilbert Murdock. Catherine lives close by to Children's Book World, where I worked (and Sarah still works), so I was lucky enough to get to know her a little. We got in on the ground floor, so to speak, with the D.J. Schwenk books - and we were so lucky to discover them so early. Sarah reviewed FRONT AND CENTER back in July, and when I finally read it in October, I learned that it was every bit as good as Sarah said it was. It is an incredibly satisfying close to D.J.'s story. And if you've yet to discover D.J. and her family and her world, the good news is that all three books are out so there is no waiting for you.

4. DRAGON SPEAR by Jessica Day George. Pull up a chair, Jessica. (Can I call you Jessica?) Okay, look. Here's the deal. I know that you can finish DRAGON SPEAR and see that Creel's story has a resolution, and that the dragons got a resolution and we have a happy ending and blah blah blah. And a trilogy is a nice round set of three, so you dotted your i's and crossed your t's and wrapped it up without staying at the party too long like so many others tend to. COME BACK TO THE PARTY, JESSICA. (I'm going to talk to the readers now. Try the appetizers!) Back when I read the ARC of DRAGON SPEAR I insisted that you all go and read this series if you hadn't yet. I am expecting, of course, that you listened to me, and that you're all ready with your teeny tiny picket signs to wave at my little internet protest, right? "What do we want?" "MORE CREEL!" "When do we want it?" "NOW!" I know that we have an uphill struggle here. Jessica's got other stuff to contend with, like her publisher, and the fact that she's been writing other awesome books, blah blah blah. But I believe that if we all hope with all our hearts we can influence this outcome. YES WE CAN. (Okay, back to Jessica now.) How are the pigs in blankets? Look, Jessica - I'm going to read anything you write. (I just finished PRINCESS OF THE MIDNIGHT BALL and now, almost 12 months after publication, it has to go on my best of the year list.) If you write a fantasy where a bowl of oatmeal comes to life, I'm going to read it. And I'm going to read it whether there's ever any more about Creel or not. I'm just saying, if you're hanging around sometime in the future and you're bored and don't have anything else to write, I'd like some more, please. It was a really good party. I'd like to stay. But if you move on to another party, I'll come too. (Not in a stalkery way.) And thanks for Creel, because I really do love her, and I can't wait to share her with my daughter in seven or eight years.

And that's it - the endings to four series I loved, all hitting in the same year. I'm leaving these characters behind with a great deal of sorrow, but I can't wait to see what these authors do next.

09/22/2009

Sarah was here visiting this weekend, and we decided to make a bunch of video reviews. They all ended up being about picture books, and most of the picture books were older. We decided that we would post these videos (whether we did them together or separately) on Tuesdays and call it OLD RELEASE TUESDAYS, celebrating the picture books we love selling that might not be (or have been) on anyone's radar. We had a blast making them, which you will hopefully see over the coming weeks!
Today's video is a lament over the gone-out-of-printness of FOX MAKES FRIENDS by Adam Relf.

07/26/2009

It is easy, as a white person, to forget about racism - especially in this Obama-centric time. We elected a black President, didn't we? Look at how far we've come!
It is easy, as a white bookseller in a predominantly white community, to look at the shop shelves and not see much of a problem when there are very few faces darker than your own staring back at you.
It is easy to look around at your own diverse bookshelves and know that you yourself are openminded, and believe with your optimistic liberal heart that the tides are turning, the winds are changing.
But they're not, really. Not enough. Not fast enough and not deeply enough. And we're all complicit. Every single one of us.
There is huge outrage over the issue of Bloomsbury's cover for Justine Larbalestier's LIAR. And there should be. It was a stupid decision to take a book about a biracial girl and slap a picture of a white girl on it. It was a shameful decision. It was a wrong decision. And the publisher's response to the outcry is, frankly, a pile of shit:
“The entire premise of this book is about a compulsive liar,” said Melanie Cecka, publishing director of Bloomsbury Children’s Books USA and Walker Books for Young Readers, who worked on Liar. “Of all the things you’re going to choose to believe of her, you’re going to choose to believe she was telling the truth about race?” (from PW, here)
Since the author herself has specifically stated that Micah (the main character in LIAR) is black, and if readers believe otherwise, it undermines her entire book, then YES I BELIEVE SHE IS TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT RACE. And I think it's pretty lucky for the publisher that this book is about a liar, because it allows them to craft this supposed truth about why they chose this cover (against the strong objections of the author), when it looks like nothing more than more of the same crap I have been hearing for years: books featuring black faces on the cover don't sell.
Bull.
But what, exactly, have we done to change that? I'm not talking about the people at The Brown Bookshelf or Color Online. I'm talking about us - the great whitewashed book community. The publishers, the booksellers, the librarians, the bloggers, the reviewers. What have we done? Sure, there are pack leaders among us, people fighting against this stuff every day - but the greater majority of us have been pretty complacent. And many of us have admitted in our blogs this week (as I am doing, right now) that we haven't been reviewing many books about people of color. I just looked back at my review posts, and since I started this blog there have been exactly three books reviewed featuring POC on the cover. Three. And of those, two of them (CHAINS and FLYGIRL) are historical fiction.
The third was SUGAR PLUM BALLERINAS, about which I wrote the following:
This book is so, so charming, AND the little girl is African-American as are some of her new friends but it is not remotely about that. It is just what we keep wishing for - a lovely little book about a black child where race isn’t an issue at all. Every child likes to read books about kids who look like them and guess what, publishers? Every child isn’t white. I hope this becomes a series.
I wrote that over a year ago, and wow, just LOOK at all I did to try to get this point across to publishers!
Oh wait. No, I really didn't. I haven't, really, and not enough of us have. Not loudly enough, not often enough, and not together enough.
If we HAD been, if we has a book community had truly been focused on this, it wouldn't have taken until now for a major author in a major publication to ask why the Caldecott Medal has never been won by a single African-American illustrator. (Leo and Diane Dillon, an interracial married couple, have won twice.) And the author? Nikki Grimes. A black author herself. She shouldn't have had to point this out, and it shouldn't have been a shock to any of us. It certainly was one to me, though. Because just stop and think about this for a few minutes. Stop and think about the people who you probably assume have won a Caldecott, but in truth have not:
Jerry Pinkney
Brian Collier
Kadir Nelson
E.B. Lewis
Ashley Bryan
Donald Crews
And if they've never won, how are Don Tate and Floyd Cooper and Sean Qualls and Brian Pinkney and Nina Crews and Leonard Jenkins and Shadra Strickland (and, and, and, and) ever supposed to do it?
I look at these names and I cannot believe that FREIGHT TRAIN wasn't a Caldecott winner. Or LET IT SHINE. Or THE OTHER SIDE. Or ROSA. Or WE ARE THE SHIP. My daughter and I both love THE HOUSE IN THE NIGHT, but just open WE ARE THE SHIP and look at the way Nelson plays with light and tell me that it didn't deserve to be recognized. Or open MOSES and explain to me why FLOTSAM won instead. Do not misunderstand me: I think FLOTSAM is an incredible piece of work, and David Wiesner is a fixture at my old shop and a lovely and extremely talented man, but the art in MOSES is also extraordinary.
And how many Caldecott committees can possibly look at Jerry Pinkney's work and put him on the Honor list...again? I do not care how many Coretta Scott King awards these artists have won. I DO NOT CARE. Jerry Pinkney's won five. It doesn't equal a Caldecott.
After I'm done thinking about this, I move on to thinking about related things that have bothered me that I never addressed with a publisher or a sales rep. The book BASS ACKWARDS AND BELLY UP and its sequel, FOOTFREE AND FANCYLOOSE, feature four girls - 3 white, 1 biracial. The covers? Three girls, all white.This particular slap is one I see over and over and over again: a book features characters of more than one race, but the cover only pictures white kids. So not only do white people only buy books with white people on them, they only buy books with ONLY white people on them?
The picture book TEN LITTLE FINGERS AND TEN LITTLE TOES is one I love and have sold many copies of, but why, in a book celebrating the sameness of all of us despite our skin color/nationality/place of residence, does the final baby and mother - the true subjects of the book - have to be white? Don't we already have enough new baby books that feature little white babies? (There are some good ones featuring black babies, but not enough, and in those books all of the other people pictured are black too.) Do all of the books about Asian babies have to be about adoption or food or Chinese New Year? (Are there even any books about Hispanic babies?)
Why aren't there more books like CORDUROY, where the little girl just happens to be black and that's just that? She just IS. It's not part of the story. It's not a slave narrative or a book about surviving a crack house or a book where every other character is also black. It's a sweet book about a little bear and the girl who takes him home, and she isn't white, and you know what? White people have been just fine with that since 1968. White people have also been purchasing the work of Mr. Ezra Jack Keats for decades, and oh look - what's that on THE SNOWY DAY? A little black boy! When GRACE FOR PRESIDENT came out a couple of years ago, I was so happy to see that Grace was black and her classmates were a motley assortment of races. And guess what? We sold a whole lot of copies of that book because it was a good book and good books sell. Crap doesn't sell no matter who's on the cover.
And if there aren't covers with black faces on them, then of course they don't sell. But there aren't any on covers because those covers don't sell (supposedly). And around and around and around we go.
I don't know what to do about this, except to start speaking up. Loudly. Persistently. Often. Speak up until I'm heard. Until we're heard. I've been sleeping for too long, and I'm ready to help change this. I don't know if I can, but I know I can't look past it for another minute.
And I'm taking the August Color Me Brown Book Challenge. I've got a whole lot of books that are going to have to wait awhile longer. The brown books have been waiting long enough.

05/11/2009

This is 2009, right? And supposedly the world is more politically correct, more sympathetic. People are trying not to say things like "that's so gay!" when a friend is being silly or weird or nonsensical or annoying, for instance.
So why do I have to open up not one, but two middle-grade novels this month, to find the word "retard" being used in place of idiot/moron/buttface/goof/weirdo/whatever? I'm sorry - didn't we decide quite awhile ago that calling people "retard" was offensive?
I understand the use of offensive words if the context requires them or is bettered by them. But when one character thinks another character is doing something dumb, aren't there a lot of other things for the first character to call the second besides "retard"? WHY YES. YES THERE ARE. Calling someone retarded or a retard is incredibly offensive to those who have someone with special needs in their life. It's offensive to people who have special needs. And, yes, I think it's just offensive, period. It's a charged word, and charged words should be used carefully.
It's one thing if you have a kids' book about an 8th grader who has a younger brother who's maybe autistic and they have to deal with the younger brother being called a retard at school. It's another thing entirely when someone falls down a flight of stairs in front of their entire class and stands up, saying, "OMG, I am SUCH a retard!" I'm betting if I asked these authors why they didn't have the character saying something like "OMG, I am such a faggot!" that the authors in question would respond, "Well, "faggot" is so offensive!"
And saying things like "well, it doesn't offend ME," is not a good excuse on any planet. It doesn't matter if you don't find it offensive. It matters that it is found offensive, period, by a large, large number of people.
Shouldn't we be even more careful in kids' books? Aren't the school years already fraught with insulting words and hurtful names? Aren't we supposed to be teaching kids to teach others with respect? Because kids are repeating what they read in books just like they're repeating what they hear in movies or from their parents' lips, and if you think they're not, you're not paying very close attention.
I am not advocating censorship. I am married to a First Amendment scholar, after all. I am just saying that when you have a wealth of words to choose from, could you just choose a word that a huge swath of the population DOESN'T find personally offensive?
(And I'm not just blaming the authors, here. What about the editors? The agents? The early manuscript readers?)
If I'm reading your ARC and I come upon that word, under the circumstances I've described above, that's it for me - that's the end of my experience with that book.
Is being able to use that word really worth turning off readers? Reviewers? Booksellers?

04/11/2009

From Sherman's website:
Dear readers, my YA novel, Radioactive Love Song, has been replaced on my writing and publication schedule by The Magic andTragic Year of My Broken Thumb, which is great news, since Magic and Tragic is the sequel to The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Yes, I am currently hard at work telling the story of Arnold Spirit, Jr.'s sophomore year. I'm sorry about the confusion surrounding Radioactive Love Song. That book will be published down the road. In the meantime, my new book of poems, Face, is out now from Hanging Loose Press, and my new book of short stories, War Dances, will be published this fall by Grove Press.
Well, yes, Sherman, I'm thrilled that Arnold's getting another book (and hope he gets two more after that), but I am still very very sad that there is no new book NEXT WEEK. So RLS wasn't exactly replaced on your publication schedule as your publication schedule was for NEXT WEEK.
I may have to temporarily break up with you, Sherman.
Or I guess I could read The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight In Heaven for the 14th time.
First I'm going to go pout for a little while.